


Americano

by galmaegi



Category: Infinite (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Busking, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 03:23:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1168067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galmaegi/pseuds/galmaegi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are new buskers at Sungjong's café.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Americano

**Author's Note:**

> For [chellesroom](http://chellesroom.livejournal.com/).

The boy and girl who used to busk in front of Over the Top Café, both apple-cheeked with heavy bangs and husky voices, have been replaced. Sungjong first notices this in the middle of his Monday shift, when he looks up from the counter to see two guys setting up by the window, wearing puffy coats and gloves but otherwise undeterred by the weather.

It’s the first time since Sungjong’s started working there that it hasn’t been the boy-girl duo, and today he realizes how much he had taken their presence for granted. As he goes about his work taking orders and pulling espressos, the different silhouette and colour of these new buskers catches his attention every time he sees them out of the corner of his eye. One of the guys sits on a folding stool with an acoustic guitar, and the other one stands and sings. The one who sings is old - he looks about 35, with tired eyes and perpetual stubble shadow on his upper lip - and the one with the guitar is younger, probably a student at Hongik University, with a fashionable wavy hairstyle and sharp profile. Sungjong can’t hear what they’re playing over the café’s sound system, his coworker Jiae’s phone playlist on shuffle.

The buskers take a break an hour later, and while the old one sits down on the stool the younger one comes inside and stops in front of the counter, examining the chalkboard menu on the wall. There aren’t many customers at this hour, so Sungjong gets a clear look at his face, sleepy-eyed and perfectly proportioned and angled. Without even hearing the buskers’ music, it’s easy to guess their game: the old one has the voice, and the young one has the looks.

After he doesn’t say anything, not even to call someone over to the cash register, Sungjong greets him politely. “Welcome, may I take your order?”

He closes his eyes and shakes his head a little, as if waking up, before reopening them. “Hi. One caffe latte and one americano, please.”

“Hot or ice?” Sungjong asks automatically, and then he sees how the busker rubs his bare hands together as he nods. “Of course hot. Isn’t it too cold to be standing outside?”

The busker looks down at his hands. “Oh, it’s not so bad today,” he replies. His voice is soft and drawling, not the deep rumble or clear drama-hero tone Sungjong would expect from looking at him. “Hyung always says music sounds better in the cold, too.” He laughs, and his laugh isn’t what Sungjong would expect either, nor the way his eyes crinkle up unevenly when he smiles.

It’s hard not to keep looking at his face, but Sungjong only allows himself a short glance before he enters the order into the register. “And your name, for the order?” he asks. It’s standard procedure since their café doesn’t have beepers, but his voice comes out a little too high-pitched all the same.

“Kim Myungsoo,” the busker replies. He looks down, then looks up shyly. “And what’s your name?”

This is definitely not standard procedure, but Sungjong supposes musicians are allowed to be quirky. “Lee Sungjong.” Kim Myungsoo nods in response, satisfied.

He pays, then stands with his hands in the pockets of his parka at the other end of the counter as Jiae and Sungjong make his order. Sungjong watches Jiae draw the veins of a leaf into the latte foam with some envy; while he’s diligently perfected his espresso pull since he started working at the café two months ago, he still hasn’t gotten the hang of the foam-drawing thing.

Myungsoo takes both of the paper cups with a smile. “Thank you, Lee Sungjong.” On the way out he pauses at the self-serve station to pour what looks like half a cup of cream into the americano. The bell above the door jingles as he leaves.

“Wow, he looks like an idol,” says Jiae. “And he knows your name.” She sighs exaggeratedly and leans on the counter. “I’m jealous.”

She has that grin on her face which means she wants to hear Sungjong say he’s good-looking, too. At least Sungjong knows it’s not that his sexuality is a novelty to her - just that Jiae loves to talk about cute boys with anyone who will respond. “We’ll see if these guys stick around,” he replies instead. The music changes to a new boy group song, one that he hasn’t had the time to learn the name of yet. “If they do, we’re gonna need to order more cream.”

Despite the temperature, the buskers are still out there playing by the time Soojung arrives to relieve Sungjong. She looks at them over her shoulder as she walks in. “Did the old group move on?” she asks.

Sungjong’s already got his apron off, and he pulls on his coat. “Either that or the girl singer had a bad day in Apgujeong.”

Soojung laughs at that, but not very much. “They’re not bad, though. I wonder if they did well today for first-timers.”

Soojung wants to be a singer, and she’s talked about busking in front of the café for a while now. _With that face, probably,_ Sungjong wants to say, before he remembers that Soojung, unlike him or Jiae, probably doesn’t care about what either of the guys outside looks like. “I’m sure noona will do much better when you make your debut,” he coos instead, and Soojung rolls her eyes but still smiles.

Since it’s winter, Sungjong usually puts in his earbuds before he steps outside, in order to get his hat and scarf on around them and to minimize the time his bare hands spend in the cold. Today, though, he waits until he’s out the door to take them out, planning to put them in again after he catches a bit of what Soojung had been talking about. Instead, the force of the buskers’ harmony catches him by surprise, and he ends up standing there with his headphones in his hand just listening to them.

Their pitch isn’t quite perfect, and even Sungjong can tell they’re not as technically accomplished as the two who used to stand outside the café. But the main singer has a unique, vibrant tone that sticks out, and Myungsoo’s softer voice accompanies it well. The song they’re singing is in English, and Sungjong can pick out a few of the words: _lucky, friend, home._ When the song ends, Sungjong walks over and drops a 1,000-won bill into the open guitar case at their feet.

“Thank you,” says the singer with a short bow. Myungsoo looks up at Sungjong, and Sungjong can’t tell if he’s smiling or squinting at him. He smiles and nods at them both, then turns and walks home.

He finally puts his earbuds in, but there’s only one song he wants to listen to, and there’s nothing on his phone that sounds like it. Eventually, he just takes the earbuds out, and listens to the song playing in his head all the way home.

\---

Sungjong has three more shifts that week at Over the Top, and the buskers are there for each of them. Sometimes they’re just setting up when Sungjong arrives; other times they’re already in the middle of a song, something with simple chords and with strong, major-key harmonies. It always puts Sungjong in a certain mood when he hears them. Now he doesn’t put his headphones in until at least halfway through his walk home, and when he gets home he looks up the snatches of lyrics he was able to recall and puts the songs into a playlist for the café. Jiae pouts the first time he plugs his phone into the sound system instead of hers, but eventally she admits that the selection of strummy guitar ballads suits the delicate decor. Sungjong even catches her singing along to one or two of the songs while she’s washing cups.

“What?” she replies. “It’s because you have them on repeat all the time, they get stuck in my head!”

Every day, Kim Myungsoo comes in and orders coffee for them an hour into Sungjong’s shift. The first part of the order changes: sometimes it’s a cappucino, sometimes a double espresso on days when the singer looks particularly old and droopy. But the end of the order is always the same: “...and one americano,” which Myungsoo diligently pours too much cream into before taking the cups outside. Sungjong keeps track of which cup is which as he watches him hand off one to his hyung, and sure enough, the americano is always for himself.

The fourth time he comes in for work and the buskers are outside, Sungjong decides he’s had enough. When Myungsoo comes in at the top of the hour, he’s ready.

Before he can even order, Sungjong sets down two paper cups on the counter, each already with a lid and ready to go. (He’d tried to draw a flower in the foam, but the first had come out as a scribble and the second was even worse.) “What’s this?” Myungsoo asks, his eyes wide with alarm.

“House special,” says Sungjong. “Two cinammon spice lattes.” Myungsoo takes them, but he still looks confused. “And don’t even think about adding any more coffee cream in there.”

He peers in through the holes in the lids. “Is this a new menu item?”

“We’re thinking about it,” Sungjong lies. “On the house, to thank you and your hyung for staying here.”

Myungsoo examines the cup once again, then looks back at Sungjong. “Thanks.” He smiles and raises a cup at Sungjong as he walks out the door backwards, bashing into the doorframe before he moves sideways and walks out the door correctly.

“That’s nice of you,” says Soojung from beside Sungjong as she dries mugs. “I didn’t even know we could make those with what we have.”

Sungjong brushes his bangs away from his eyes. “If I heard him say ‘americano’ one more time I was going to scream.”

“Hmm.” Soojung smiles, but says nothing. “Can you make me one later?”

“Of course.” On the other side of the front window, Myungsoo gives his hyung one of the paper cups, then says something that makes the singer turn to look inside the café and directly at Sungjong. His mouth drops open into an O, and he turns back to smile at Myungsoo. Sungjong has no idea what they’re talking about, nor can he guess.

\---

Sungjong’s next shift is the following Tuesday, and as he approaches Over the Top he can see the buskers aren’t there. He stops right outside, dismayed. The pavement in front of the café looks empty without them.

He still puts on his playlist - Jiae tosses him the sound system’s auxiliary cable without a word - but it seems a bit flatter today. Just as the new buskers had caught his attention just by being in the corner of his eye before, today all he can see is that they aren’t there on the other side of the window.

Two hours into his shift, he’s on bar and Jiae is working the cash when the bell above the door jingles. “Welcome,” Jiae calls automatically, and then she turns and moves away from the counter. “Ah, just a second.” Her eyes slide sideways to Sungjong. Sungjong peers around the espresso machine to see Kim Myungsoo at the counter, with a black soft guitar case on his back. “I’ll be back,” says Jiae not nearly quietly enough, and she disappears past Sungjong into the back room.

Sungjong steps up to the counter and stands stiffly. “May I take your order?”

Myungsoo looks up at the chalkboard on the wall behind Sungjong. “It’s not on the menu. Cinnamon spice...?”

Sungjong laughs, in spite of himself. “Yes, I can make it.” He smirks. “But you’ll have to pay today.”

“That’s fine.”

Sungjong moves over to the bar and starts pouring out milk into a metal cup. “You’re alone today,” he says, forcing himself to sound casual.

“Oh, hyung is at an audition,” Myungsoo replies. “He’ll be here tomorrow.”

“An audition?” Sungjong wrinkles his nose at Myungsoo as he steams the milk, then pulls the cup away when it’s done. “Isn’t it a bit too late for him? He’s like thirty.”

Myungsoo giggles and covers his mouth with his sleeve. Sungjong thinks it’s very irresponsible for him to do that while Sungjong is handling hot liquids. “He’s only thirty when you round up.”

“Still.” Sungjong squeezes cinnamon syrup into the coffee cup, then starts measuring out ground beans for the machine. “And why aren’t you auditioning together? You’d have a better chance, you know. Acoustic duos are popular these days. You could be on _Superstar K._ ”

Myungsoo shrugs. “Maybe the next one.”

The song playing overhead changes to the one Sungjong had heard Myungsoo and his hyung playing the first day they came to the café, which is exactly what Sungjong had hoped wouldn't happen. Myungsoo looks up at the ceiling and Sungjong absorbs himself in pulling the espresso shot, then adding milk. Then he sets the cup in front of Myungsoo.

“Any other questions?” says Myungsoo.

Sungjong takes a breath, and then looks up. He doesn’t have anything left to lose now. “Just one. Why americano? Every day for I don’t know how long.”

It’s Myungsoo’s turn to look sheepish, and he looks down at the counter and turns the coffee cup around in his hands. “It’s a habit I picked up,” he says, “from an old friend. Someone who used to come to this café, actually.” He looks up through his bangs. “Maybe you know...?”

Sungjong shakes his head. “I don’t know any girl who dumps a cup of cream into her coffee,” he says carefully.

Myungsoo laughs, and his eyes dart around awkwardly. “Not a girl. Tall guy.”

“Oh.” Sungjong’s heart picks up. “Well. I only started working here two months ago, so I don’t know about that.”

“It’s okay,” says Myungsoo. “I think I like this drink better.”

There’s a moment of silence between them, filled by the ringing chords of the song. Then Myungsoo asks, “When do you work this week?”

Sungjong glances at the work schedule pinned on the wall behind him, even though he doesn’t need to. “Wednesday and Friday.”

“I see.” Myungsoo swirls the latte around in its cup. “And when are you off work?”

There’s a few people lining up behind Myungsoo now. Sungjong wipes his palms on his apron. “Friday afternoon. Will you be here?”

“I’ll be here.” Myungsoo hefts his guitar and takes the coffee. “I’ll see you then.” He’s barely out the door before Jiae rushes out from the back to gleefully punch Sungjong in the arm. He fends her off, but that afternoon, all his lattes finally come out properly - with perfect hearts.


End file.
